Balance Wheel–All cleaned up

Woo-hoo!  I have something cleaned up and put back together again for Ms. Rusty! 

Here are the all the balance wheel parts after they have been cleaned and polished

The first step in reassembly (after putting the two “eccentric” pins back in) is putting the retaining spring back on the center pin.  It’s important to make sure the right hand side of the spring is attached to the center pin.

Then you put on the retaining washer, with the single hole going over the center pin.  Then set on the Textolite gear.  The key to this step is connecting the pin on the gear with the left-hand side of the spring. (Back view of gear with pin in spring).  Then you can slide on the gear collar.

(click here for a before picture)

Before tightening the set screws on the gear collar, you need to check the clearance between the gear and collar.  You don’t want too much wiggle room, but you also don’t want it so tight that the gear has trouble moving.  A good way to check for clearance is to see if you can slide the edge of a piece of note paper between the collar and the gear.  Once the clearance is set, you can tighten the set screws.

I also want to point out that with Turtle Wax Chrome Polish (and a lot of elbow grease) I was able to remove all the surface rust from the chrome area of the wheel.  Here is a before and some after pictures.  It’s not perfect, but pretty good if you ask me!

A little birdie told me Evapo-Rust works excellent on chrome parts, so I have a bottle of that on order from Amazon (thanks Alasdair).  I’m hoping it works better on small parts that are hard to polish by hand, like screws.

Balance Wheel Disassembly

Ms. Rusty’s  balance wheel gear was so full of gunk that almost didn’t notice the three screws that could be removed to further disassemble the balance wheel. After removing these screws I could then take off the balance wheel gear collar. (By the way, if you are wondering how I come up with the names for these things, I’m taking them directly from the  Adjuster’s Manual.)

This is what the back of the balance wheel looks like with the collar removed and after removing the gear

  

Here is a close-up of the gear, or more properly, the Textolite gear.  Because the grease is so old and gummy, the spring and retaining washer came off with it.  I’ve separated them in the second picture so you can better see how it’s assembled.

    

The retaining spring is held in place with a pin on the gear and another pin in the recessed seat of the balance wheel.  The center pin in the recessed area holds the spring and the other two pins can be removed – so of course I did (see photos below).

  

Quoting from the Adjusters Manual “There are three pins in this recessed seat, the outer two pins being eccentric”.  Ok…so the outer two pins are odd and bizarre?  I didn’t think that’s exactly what the manual meant so I looked up the meaning of “eccentric” online http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eccentric and here were my choices:

1.  deviating or departing from convention, esp. in a bizarre manner; irregular or odd

2.  situated away from the center or the axis

3. Compare concentric not having a common center: eccentric circles

4. not precisely circular 

5. a person who deviates from normal forms of behavior, esp. in a bizarre manner

6. a device for converting rotary motion to reciprocating motion

Well, they are different from the middle pin because they can be removed (option 1) and are off center  (option 2).  Option 4 is viable because the little peg is not in the center of the pin and because of the way it works, option 6 could be the right answer.  All I know for sure at this point – they are not people who deviate from normal forms of behavior, especially in a bizarre manner.  I think that definition applies to me, not these pins   

Removing the Balance Wheel

The first step in removing the balance wheel (the big wheel on the right hand side of the machine) is to remove the little set screw on the “clamp screw” (or what I like to call the shiny knob wheel).
See that little screw near the top of the shiny knob? That has to comes off before you can unscrew and remove the clamp screw (aka – shiny knob).
Here is a photo after the “shiny knob” has been taken off and showing you the “stop motion clamp washer”.
 
Experience with refurbishing my Singer 15-91 has taught me that this little washer can be a royal pain in the butt if it isn’t put on correctly.  If you look closely you will notice that there are 3 little bumps the front of the washer and 2 tabs that tip away from the back.   Noticing these things will be handy during reassembly (as will photos).

After removing the washer you can then pull off the balance wheel.  See all that ugly brown goop on the wheel and inside the motor gear?  That’s 60+ year old grease.  Since it is now the consistency of crystalized molasses it will need to be cleaned out before this baby will purr again.

Tomorrow I’ll finish disassembling the balance wheel.